Emergency vehicles such as police cars, ambulances and fire trucks typically have a signaling system including audio devices such as sirens or speakers and visual indicators such as warning lights. One common type of warning light assembly for emergency vehicles is a light bar. A light bar includes a plurality of lights that are enclosed in a common housing. Different types of lights, such as stationary, strobe, oscillating and rotating lights as well as a speaker or siren can be packaged in a given light bar to provide a variety of different signaling options.
A light bar is generally mounted to a surface on the emergency vehicle such as an exterior sidewall or a roof of the vehicle using bolts that extend through the light bar housing to the interior of vehicle where they are secured via washers and nuts. However, certain emergency vehicles such as ambulances have cabinets or other structures lining the interior walls of the vehicle. As a result, during the assembly process, the light bars must be mounted to the vehicle before the interior of the vehicle is finished with the cabinets in order to allow the necessary access for fastening of the bolts with nuts and washers. Sequencing the assembly process in this manner can cause problems when the ambulance manufacturer does not have sufficient light bar assemblies in stock. In such a case, the ambulances must stand with the interiors unfinished while awaiting delivery of the light bars. This is inefficient, causing unnecessary delays in the assembly process. While ambulance manufacturers recognize this problem, which is exacerbated by manufacturers desire to minimize stock of components such as light bars in favor of just-in-time delivery, they view it as a breakdown caused by the supplier of the light bars, not a problem with the assembly process.
A related problem that arises when a conventional nut and bolt arrangement is used to mount a light bar to an ambulance or the like having interior walls or cabinetry is that once the light bar is mounted it is very difficult and time-consuming to remove because of the lack of access to the fasteners. Consequently, any service or maintenance work on the light bar generally must be performed with the light bar in place on the vehicle. As will be appreciated, this is inefficient because the vehicle must be taken out of service for a significant amount of time to perform the necessary maintenance or service to the light bar.